


and then there were twelve

by jongin_isms



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Gen, Hospitals, Kinda Weird, Mental Health Issues, Triggers, only read if ur into this stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 00:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20883242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jongin_isms/pseuds/jongin_isms
Summary: an au in which exo lives in the psychiatric ward of a hospital.





	and then there were twelve

oh sehun was admitted into the psychiatric ward of the Asan Medical Center in the dead of winter on December 22nd, 2013. he was placed into a group with eleven other men all just as deranged as he was.

at eight o'clock in the evening, sehun enters the white room with two nurses following behind him, each holding onto one of his arms. he's met with eleven pairs of eyes for a split second, and then most of them turn away, looking around the room or down at their laps, except for a select few. they sit in black chairs, a dark contrast to the rest of the room, in a semi-circle. there's an empty seat at the very end of the row next to a good-looking boy who had his hands covering his face. as a matter of fact, all of them were good-looking.

the nurses guide him to his seat, murmuring a few words to the psychiatrist sitting in front of the twelve, before exiting the room, but not before one of them rubs his arm and whispers a 'be a good boy, sehun,' into his ear. sehun grimaces, pulling away from her and unconsciously moving to his right, brushing arms with the boy next to him. this causes him to look up. he had very large, dark, round eyes, along with jet black hair that almost looked like it was wet, and very plush pink lips. he immediately looked away after jolting back from sehun's touch, rubbing the palms of his hands along his biceps frantically as if he were trying to warm himself up. however, the room was warm and he was wearing a thick long-sleeve shirt.

sehun looks away from the owl-eyed boy, meeting the gaze of the psychiatrist who was giving him a warm smile. "welcome sehun. I'm dr. lee, your psychiatrist from now own." he speaks gently, resting his clipboard on his lap. "this is the group you will be attending therapy with. why don't you introduce yourself?" sehun swallows, eyes going wide. he didn't like speaking in front of people.

"hello, I'm sehun."

he says timidly, shrinking back into his chair. "oh sehun." he adds, taking a peek at all of the other boys. some were listening, while some were immersed in their own worlds. "great." the doctor, who's name Sehun already forgot, tells him.

"let's go around the room and continue. kyungsoo, you next." owl-eyed boy, or kyungsoo, looks up quickly, eyes going even wider than before. he clears his throat quietly before speaking up.

"I'm do kyungsoo."

he tells them, immediately covering his face back up with his hands. sehun notices that one particularly handsome boy with platinum blonde hair was eyeing kyungsoo's body up and down from across the room. there's a glint in his eyes, one of darker intentions, head dipped down, lips pulled back into a smirk. sehun doesn't think he's ever seen anyone more attractive in his life. his skin is slightly darker than everyone else's, and there was just something about the aura that surrounded him that screamed 'danger'.

the boy after kyungsoo, who had been mumbling sentence after sentence in mandarin to his lap, looks up and introduces himself as xiao lu.

"but you can call me luhan. only if you want to, though! I wouldn't want to make anyone do anything they didn't want to but I just thought th-"

he's cut off by the psychiatrist holding up a hand. "it's okay Luhan, take it easy. deep breaths, just like we talked about." his voice is soothing, but luhan just ducks his head down, going right back to mumbling under his breath to no one at all. sehun didn't know what he was saying since he didn't understand chinese, but the way he was twitching as he spoke was very unsettling, not to mention that he looked much younger than he probably was.

the attention was then brought to a taller boy with dark brown hair, the ends of the strands seemingly charred as if he had just nearly escaped a fire. when sehun looks down at the boy's hand, he understands why. he gripped a lighter with large fingers, flicking it on and off while staring into the distance. the psychiatrist's mouth opens slightly when he sees the flame, eyes moving between the boy's face and the black lighter.

"chanyeol, give that to me right now."

chanyeol looks up at him slowly, and gives him a simple, one-worded answer. "no." his deep voice certainly didn't match his face, and how raspy it was rattled sehun's bones to the core. "chanyeol, I need you to hand me the lighter." said boy only seemed to get more angry with each word that left the doctor's lips, and sehun could swear he saw flames dancing in chanyeol's eyes when he started to stand up from his seat. the psychiatrist's eyes widen out of fear that he was probably about to set the entire room on fire, and he immediately tries to negotiate with him. "okay, it's alright, you can keep your lighter, just put it on the floor by your feet, okay?" for some reason beyond sehun's understanding, chanyeol complies, sitting down as the chair legs screech against the floor. kyungsoo shivers and covers his ears.

"park chanyeol."

the boy states his name clearly, eyes fixed on his precious lighter below him.

'pyromaniac,' sehun concludes. 'this should be fun.'

next to him was the boy who probably looked the nicest out of everyone. his introduction was very simple.

"hi, I'm junmyeon."

he states with a small smile. he was very alert, though - ears perked up, listening to everything the boys had to say and taking in all of his surroundings carefully. he had brown hair and looked relatively sane. well, as sane as you could be in a mental hospital. but in a place like this, looks didn't matter. looks didn't determine a thing about what went on inside of your head, and every single one of these boys proved that. next to junmyeon sat a boy with cat-like eyes.

"kim minseok,"

he sighs out quickly, not bothering to glance up. he was drawing on a piece of white paper resting in his lap. he held a black marker tightly, fingers turning white with the effort. he drew a circle, going over the shape at least ten times, each movement making it darker than the last. the boy with the high cheekbones next to him was pointing at the picture, murmuring about what he saw within the darkness of the drawing.

"kim jongdae,"

he says in the midst of his mumbling, glancing around the room for a quick second and then looking behind him as if he had heard someone call his name. minseok continues with his circle and jongdae's words cut through the white-walled silence.

"why'd you draw a man?"

Jongdae speaks loudly, and even luhan snaps out of his mandarin stupor to stare at him. there was clearly no man on the paper, but the cat-eyed boy only raised his eyebrows and looked at his friend with a knowing, gummy smile, as if he saw it as well. jongdae returns the look, his lips curling upwards into a grin similar to the cheshire cat's. they must be friends. sehun found this situation very unnerving, especially when Jongdae's eyes scanned the room and landed on him. sehun looks away quickly, returning his gaze to the psychiatrist.

the tanned boy was the one to be introduced next, and sehun couldn't help but slowly let his eyes wander over to him. the boy's head was still dipped down and instead of looking at kyungsoo, he was now staring at the psychiatrist through heavy-lidded eyes - though, not really at him. more so, through him, and at the white wall behind him.

"my name is kim jongin."

the sultry voice states, a wicked grin spreading across his face. sehun wasn't even sure he wanted to know what was wrong with jongin. kyungsoo shivers again, and sehun still doesn't understand the correlation between the two of them.

the boy sitting next to Jongin is shorter, with black hair and bangs that fell slightly into his eyes. he looked very uncomfortable, bouncing his leg up and down viciously as he tapped his fingers against his thigh. it was almost impossible not to notice how park chanyeol looked at him.

"I'm baekhyun."

he states quietly, thin lips turning upwards for just a second, before returning to the straight line they previously formed. next to baekhyun were the last three boys - all chinese and very strange. the first one introduced himself as yixing. he looked up at the psychiatrist and gave him a small wave, then proceeded to clasp his hands tightly in front of him and stare up at the ceiling. he moved his lips rapidly, as if reciting a well-memorized paragraph of some sort, but no sound actually came out of his mouth. the next introduced himself as tao. he looked like he could kill someone, and even though Sehun didn't know him, he was positive he was capable of murder. he had narrow eyes and a very slim figure, and his face was constantly changing. he looked angry one minute, and the next, he was smiling at the taller boy next to him.

"yifan,"

The last one states, voice gravelly. "just call me kris," and he leaves it at that, not saying another word. he was wearing short sleeves, and there were scratches - not cuts, scratches - along his biceps and all the way up his neck. the psychiatrist nods, looking at the twelve of them.

sehun wonders why this man has dedicated his life to deally with the criminally insane.

"well, that's all of you. since it's already late, we're going to pick this up tomorrow. we're putting you in a separate hallway from the rest of the ward. if you'll all follow me, I'll take you there." he stands up and heads for the door, and twelve nurses walk in when he opens it, all looking exactly alike, and all assigning themselves to a boy. the woman grips onto sehun's hands harshly, bringing them behind his back and clasping them together.

she holds them there for the duration of the walk to their private corridor. he hisses in protest while he faintly hears chanyeol yell something like 'get my lighter or I'll burn the entire building down!' followed by a muffled laugh on baekhyun's part. he's walking in between jongin and kyungsoo. the shorter man seemed to be the one who was having the most trouble with being restricted from using his hands. kyungsoo struggles in the woman's grasp, breathing heavily while using all of his strength to attempt to pull his hands free, but before he can succeed, they arrive at the door that leads into their private hallway.

outside every room, there was a placard next to the door with their names printed on it. when sehun spots his, he pulls his hand free from the nurse and rests it on the doorknob, wanting nothing more than to be in the safe confines of his own room. once they've all found their names, the psychiatrist tells them that they can enter. his room was situated in between kyungsoo's and minseok's, and right across from Jongin's. sehun didn't know if that was good thing or a bad thing.

he walks into the room and takes in the whiteness of everything - the walls, the bedsheets, the desk. he turns to close the door behind him, but before the lock clicks, a tanned hand slithers through the crack and curls around the doorframe, pushing it open slowly.

"hey man," jongin drawls, one corner of his lips curling up easily.

"if I could give you one word of advice, it would be to not judge a book by its cover." sehun stands still as he stares. "you should probably stay away from me." jongin informs him, eyes turning serious as he takes in the stoic look on sehun's face.

then he laughs. "don't say I didn't warn you."

**Author's Note:**

> obviously none of them are actually like this. my mind is a weird place. let me know if you like it.


End file.
